Curious sports story compels mom to write

Posted: Thursday, June 07, 2007

Matthew Carroll’s report on last Thursday’s soccer showdown between the Kenai Kards and the Soldotna Stars at the state soccer playoffs was inaccurate and curious. The inaccuracies I can easily live with; they alone would not compel me to take time to write this. Besides, anyone who attended the game knows that Barry Norwood was an integral part of a total team effort that finished with what would have been the winning goal were it not for a bogus call made with five seconds left to go in regulation time. An outcome-changing bogus call would also not be sufficient for any seasoned soccer mom like me to actually take the time to write this.

What compels me to write this is the curious amount of column inches devoted to the fact that Barry missed two shootout attempts in the shootout that ensued after 30 minutes of scoreless extended play. The attention is curious because a total of five shooters from both teams were unsuccessful.

Since the reporter did not attend the game, the only way to interpret the emphasis on Barry’s misses would be as an attempt by an ersatz adult to frame Kenai’s missed opportunity as some kind of equalization for the ref’s guffaw in regulation play.

Given that interpretation, at least we are all on the same page that the ref’s call during regulation time did indeed alter the outcome of the game. That means the PKs missed or made weren’t even warranted, eh?

This part the article got right by inference: Barry is no soccer superstar. He is just one more Kard in a deck full of aces. He will undoubtedly miss some PKs in the future, as well as continue to make them as he did during the total team effort that resulted in the Kards becoming the 2007 Northern Lights Conference silver champions.

Thanks to all the Kards, Pete Ehrhardt and Wally Ward for a thrilling 2007 prep soccer season. And thanks especially to Coach Landry for being a great leader and role model to this team. If I had half the class he has (exemplified by the comments attributed to him in the article) I wouldn’t have even written this.